IBM launches cloud data centers for government

IBM announced data centers designed to meet government security requirements and an ability to expand software and services development across its “growing cloud ecosystem,” the company said.

The IBM Cloud Services data centers provide the firm’s SoftLayer infrastructure as a service (IaaS) that meet Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program and Federal Information Security Management Act requirements.

The data centers will open up the market for SoftLayer IaaS, enabling customers to deliver over 100 applications and services, such as desktop virtualization, security and geospatial services to government agencies.

The technology is positioned for creating hybrid and private cloud systems for government agencies, integrating on-premise and cloud-based workloads via the datacenters. Hybrid cloud systems provide government agencies more security and control, as well as the opportunity to benefit from existing private cloud investments, according to IBM.

The first data center will open in Dallas this month, with a companion center opening in Ashburn, Va., later this year. The data centers will have initial capacity for 30,000 servers and share an isolated private network with 2,000 gigabytes per second of connectivity.

IBM is building a security operations center for the data centers to provide government clients with added security, availability and incident response services.

“Government clients will find SoftLayer services delivered via these new centers give them the ideal platform for the mission-critical workloads they are moving to the cloud, or new Web-centric workloads,” said Anne Altman, general manager, US Federal, IBM.

The new data centers are part of IBM’s $1.2 billion investment to expand its global cloud operations globally, according to the firm. By the end of 2014, IBM will operate 40 data centers across five continents, and it will double SoftLayer cloud capacity, it said.

IBM also announced the launch of the Bluemix Platform-as-a-Service Acceleration Program for the federal government, designed to enable a cloud-based ecosystem of developers, independent software vendors and federal system integrators. The program will launch new education and tools for in-house developers in federal agencies and business partners, IBM said.